According to “Kushner, Inc.,” Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council, has told people that Ivanka Trump thinks she could someday be president. “Her father’s reign in Washington, D.C., is, she believes, the beginning of a great American dynasty,”

.. Kushner, whose pre-White House experience included owning a boutique newspaper and helming a catastrophically ill-timed real estate deal, has arrogated to himself substantial parts of American foreign policy. According to Ward, shortly after Rex Tillerson was confirmed as secretary of state, Kushner told him “to leave Mexico to him because he’d have Nafta wrapped up by October.”

Partly, the Jared and Ivanka story is about the “reality distortion field” — a term one of Ward’s sources uses about Kushner — created by great family wealth. She quotes a member of Trump’s legal team saying that the two “have no idea how normal people perceive, understand, intuit.”Privilege, in them, has been raised to the level of near sociopathy.

.. Ward, the author of two previous books about the worlds of high finance and real estate, has known Kushner slightly for a long time; she told me that when he bought The New York Observer newspaper in 2006, he tried to hire her. She knocks down the idea that either he or his wife is a stabilizing force or moral compass in the Trump administration. Multiple White House sources told her they think it was Kushner who ordered the closing of White House visitor logs in April 2017, because he “didn’t want his frenetic networking exposed.” Ward reports that Cohn was stunned by their blasé reaction to Trump’s defense of the white-nationalist marchers in Charlottesville, Va.: “He was upset that they were not sufficiently upset.”

Still, even if you assume that the couple are amoral climbers, their behavior still doesn’t quite make sense. Ward writes that Ivanka’s chief concern is her personal brand, but that brand has been trashed. The book cites an October 2017 survey measuring consumer approval of more than 1,600 brands. Ivanka’s fashion line was in the bottom 10. A leading real estate developer tells Ward that Kushner, now caught up in multiple state and federal investigations, has become radioactive: “No one will want to do business with him.” (Kushner resigned as C.E.O. of Kushner Companies in 2017, but has kept most of his stake in the business.)

To truly make sense of their motivations, Ward told me, you have to understand the gravitational pull of their fathers. Husband and wife are both “really extraordinarily orientated and identified through their respective fathers in a way that most fully formed adults are not,” she said.

Among the most interesting parts of “Kushner, Inc.,” are the chapters about the business history of Charles Kushner, Jared’s felonious father, and his plan to restore his reputation, with Jared’s help, after getting out of prison in 2006. Part of that rehabilitation project was the purchase of a flagship building in Manhattan — 666 Fifth Avenue, an absurdly on-the-nose address — for which the family paid a record amount at the very height of the real estate market in 2007. When the Great Recession hit, the building became a white elephant, its debt threatening the family fortune.

Ward’s book suggests that the search for someone who would bail out 666 Fifth Avenue has played a significant role in American foreign policy during the Trump administration. And since the completion of her book, we’ve learned that Trump overrode intelligence officials, who were concerned about Kushner and his family’s ties to foreign investors, to give Kushner a security clearance.

“You’ll notice that the U.S. position toward Qatar changes when the Qataris bail out 666 Fifth Avenue,” said Ward, adding, “We look like a banana republic.” Maybe that’s why Jared and Ivanka appear so blithely confident. As public servants, they’re obviously way out of their depth. But as self-dealing scions of a gaudy autocracy? They’re naturals.

Dr. Lance Dodes makes the case that the president suffers from a dangerous sociopathic disorder

Lance Dodes: Mr. Trump is a sociopath, in that he meets every diagnostic criterion for the official diagnostic term “Antisocial Personality Disorder.” The fact that this is a personality disorder, rather than simply a single symptom such as anxiety or depression, means that all his actions are signs of this severe, continuous, mental disturbance.

To understand his actions, it is essential to keep in mind that sociopaths have only one goal: to enhance themselves, and that in pursuing their self-interest, they lack both normal human empathy for others and a normal human conscience. Cheating, conning, lying, stealing, threatening are all done with no remorse.

When stressed with facts that would require them to admit failure, or even that others know more or are more capable than them, sociopaths lose track of reality, becoming delusional with insistence on the truth of what they psychologically need to maintain their superior view of themselves. Indeed, nobody matters except to the degree they can serve the sociopath’s personal needs.

That’s why loyalty is demanded, but as soon as an associate disagrees, the sociopath turns on them with a fury; there was never a real relationship to begin with.

Mr. Trump’s denial of the facts about Mr. Warmbier is consistent with his sociopathy. He ignores reality, is unremorseful about lying and does not hesitate to sacrifice the feelings of others such as Mr. Warmbier’s family. We don’t know exactly why he lied in this case, but one possibility is that Mr. Trump has heavily promoted his relationship with Kim as evidence of his superior ability to manage world tensions and thinks that confronting Kim would interfere with that, hence personally diminishing Mr. Trump. In any case, Mr. Trump’s absence of feelings for Mr. Warmbier or his family is the same as his absence of feelings for the disabled reporter he mocked, for religious and racial minorities, for children separated from their parents at the border and on and on.

Lance Dodes: Mr. Trump has a long history that proves his diagnosis. If you consider the 7 traits that define Antisocial Personality Disorder in the DSM-5, he meets every one of them:

1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors.
2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying … or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
4. Irritability and aggressiveness
5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others.
6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

Tana Ganeva: What’s the danger of having a sociopath in charge of the US?

Lance Dodes: Sociopathy is the most serious mental disability possible for the President. Other conditions do not lead to continual disregard for the welfare of others, lying, cheating, and repeated loss of reality under stress.

The bogus argument made by some that Abraham Lincoln is known to have suffered with depression, so Mr. Trump is not different, fails on this point. Lincoln’s depression did not make him cruel or indifferent to the feelings of others, cheat, lie, lose track of reality when stressed, or have a need to be an absolute ruler over everyone.

There are two major risks from Mr. Trump.

First, there is a serious risk that he will start a war to distract the country from his multiple failures and his attempts to become a one-man ruler. This is most likely to occur as he is stressed by challenges to his position as President. Other tyrants have plunged their nations into war, sometimes by creating an international incident as an excuse, to avoid internal disputes and solidify power.

Second, there is a serious risk of his destroying democracy in this country. He has already eroded it by attacking the principle of balance of powers, attacking the judicial system and the Congress, attempting to gather all power to himself. He has tried to destroy our free press by claiming that its criticisms of him are “fake news” and that a free press is the enemy of the people. These are well-known tactics of would-be tyrants, and are signs of sociopathy with his single-minded concern for himself and absence of conscience or concern for the feelings or lives of anyone else.

First there was Ivana. Then there was Marla. Now comes trouble in paradise with Kim.

.. This time, it wasn’t just lust, betrayal and secrets splayed across Page Six. This time, it was in Congress, part of an investigation that could lead to legal jeopardy for the Trumps or impeachment for the president.

.. In his testimony, Michael Cohen called himself a “fool” when it came to Trump. “I ignored my conscience and acted loyal to a man when I should not have,” Cohen said. A fool for love, held in thrall by Trump. How could anyone be held in thrall by such a sleazy goofball, much less offer to take a bullet for him or make 500 threats on his behalf?

.. “It seems unbelievable that I was so mesmerized by Donald Trump that I was willing to do things for him that I knew were absolutely wrong,” said Cohen in his “Goodfellas” accent, adding that being around the “icon” was “intoxicating.”

“Mr. Trump is an enigma,” Cohen said. “He is complicated, as am I.”

Actually, Trump is simple, grasping for money, attention and fame. The enigma about Trump is why he cut off his lap dog so brutally that Cohen fell into the embrace of Robert Mueller and New York federal prosecutors. Trump is often compared to a mob boss, but Michael Corleone would never turn on a loyal capo, only on one who had crossed him.

The portrait Cohen drew of Trump was not surprising. It has been apparent for some time that the president is a con man, racist, cheat and liar. (See: Jared Kushner security clearance.)

What was most compelling about the congressional hearing was the portrait of the sadistic relationship between the sycophant and the sociopath.

Cohen told the House Oversight Committee that working for Trump had made him feel that he was “involved in something greater than yourself — that you were somehow changing the world.”

Threatening to sue people and take away their livelihoods or ruin their reputations isn’t exactly Greenpeace or Doctors Without Borders. But Cohen was chugging Trump Kool-Aid. He saw himself as Trump’s protector, the thug’s thug.

In late 2017, he appeared to get misty while talking to Vanity Fair’s Emily Jane Fox about Trump: “One man who wants to do so much good with so many detractors against him needs support.” He vowed he would never walk away from Trump, no matter what. A year ago, he even shopped around a book that was meant to be a rebuttal to Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” pitched as the “family fix-it guy” and titled “Trump Revolution: From the Tower to the White House, Understanding Donald J. Trump.”

.. He understands Trump now.

A stung Trump went on a tweet storm Friday morning, bringing up that book proposal, calling it a “‘love letter to Trump’ manuscript,” and noting: “Written and submitted long after Charlottesville and Helsinki, his phony reasons for going rogue. Book is exact opposite of his fake testimony, which now is a lie!”

Unlike many Republican TV commentators who can wash away past sins about Sarah Palin and the Iraq war — and get a big payday and liberal love — by trashing Trump, Cohen is not destined for reputation rehab.

The problem in a nutshell, as Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien once told The Times, was that Michael Cohen wasn’t Roy Cohn. The latter Trump lawyer was the one who helped shape Trump’s character or lack thereof, drumming in the win-at-all-costs mentality Donald had learned at his father’s knee.

Trump, who once bleated “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” in his anger about Jeff Sessions recusing himself, wanted a lawyer who was whip-smart, amoral, ruthless and predatory. Cohen was merely Renfield to Trump’s Dracula, gratefully eating insects and doing the fiend’s bidding.

Trump used Cohen for dirty deeds done dirt cheap, as ACDC sang.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump showed up late to Cohen’s son’s bar mitzvah and then made a belittling speech about how he had come only because Cohen had begged him and everyone around him. The Times revealed last April that Trump had regularly threatened to fire Cohen and quoted Roger Stone saying that Trump mocked Cohen for overpaying for Trump real estate.

With a few exceptions in his inner circle and with family, Trump doesn’t give loyalty or deserve it. That’s why Republicans on the Hill who so obsequiously stand by him will eventually learn it wasn’t worth it, just as Cohen warned them.

Loyalty is a rare commodity in Washington. And Cohen is not the most wretched sycophant in political history. That honor goes to Andrew Young, a slavishly devoted aide to John Edwards during the 2008 campaign who served as a driver, personal shopper, handyman and butler to the North Carolina senator.

When Edwards had an affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter and a pregnancy ensued, he persuaded Young to say that he was the father. Edwards also got Young to go on the lam with his wife, who was a nurse, and Hunter and the baby, hiding out in fancy hotels and a posh home near Santa Barbara — an odyssey financed by Young and Bunny Mellon. As Young wrote in “The Politician,” inside the campaign there was “a cult-like atmosphere” that encouraged extreme sycophancy.

When Trump gave me a tour of his campaign headquarters in Trump Tower in the summer of 2016, he introduced Cohen as “my lawyer.” Cohen looked furtive, standing around with Trump favorites Corey Lewandowski and Hope Hicks and a few young guys at a desk and a whole bunch of Trump portraits and cutouts and a wall with pictures of Trump’s vanquished primary rivals.

It was the least presidential campaign headquarters ever, with the drywall still unfinished in some places. As The Times reported, Cohen, who had been pushing for years for Trump to be president, was jealous of the attention Trump gave Lewandowski.

When Trump somehow stumbled into the presidency, he and his family did not think Cohen was up to snuff to come to Washington, much less get some high-level job like chief of staff that he dreamed of. The Journal reported that Cohen and his guests did not even get priority access to the inaugural fetes.

“He was central casting for Trump Tower but not for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio told me. “The problem is, of course, that much of what burdens Cohen is exactly what Trump liked about him in the past.He was willing to be awful on command and had done so countless times making countless enemies. As someone who was the target of this behavior, I can tell you it was so cartoonish as to be ridiculous.”

Everyone is disposable in Trumpworld. They sidelined the fixer. By the time federal prosecutors were investigating Cohen’s hush payments to Trump inamoratas, an adult-film actress and a former Playboy model, Trump was barely speaking to Cohen.

“Boss, I miss you so much,” he said in a rare phone call with Trump, The Journal reported. “I wish I was down there with you. It’s really hard for me to be here.”

The yearning was even more palpable than texts from Jeff Bezos to Lauren Sanchez.

The self-styled protector was in purdah and he resented it.

“If Trump was more sophisticated and had the ability to think long term, he would have anticipated that Cohen might have become a problem if he didn’t hold him close,” O’Brien told me. But Trump isn’t a long-term thinker.

“He’s never had to deal with the people he has face-planted coming back to haunt him — ever.He’s been doing this to people for decades,” O’Brien said. The difference now? “He never had law enforcement turning people on him and essentially weaponizing them against him.”

D’Antonio agreed that “the president made the mistake of disrespecting Cohen because he believed he had purchased Michael and that he would stay bought. When the underdog turns and bites hard, the overdog is always surprised.”

.. ProPublica obtained a recording of small children wailing for their parentsin a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, while a Border Patrol agent joked, “We’ve got an orchestra here.”

.. several people associated with the White House stepped forward to dissemble. Kirstjen Nielsen, head of the Department of Homeland Security, sent out a series of tweets denying that the administration’s policy was in fact the administration’s policy. “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period,” she lied.

.. Melania Trump’s spokeswoman put out a slippery statement distancing the first lady from the president’s actions and sowing confusion about their cause. “Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform,” the statement said, as if her husband were not responsible for the separations.

.. Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, claimed that “nobody” in the administration likes the policy.

.. It’s hard to tell if these women are engaged in deliberate gaslighting or frantic reputation maintenance.

.. Perhaps Nielsen is worried about her post-White House prospects now that she’s best known for the systematic traumatization of children.

.. Maybe Melania Trump realizes that being the trophy wife of a child-torturer is bad for her brand. (#BeBest!)

.. no one should be able to squirm out of admitting that the evil practice of family separation is Donald Trump’s doing, abetted by everyone who abets him.

.. while some Trump apologists — as well as Trump himself — deny their role in tearing families apart, others in the administration boldly own it. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero-tolerance policy for illegal entry, period,” Trump’s senior policy adviser Stephen Miller told The Times.

.. The only alternative to the current policy, they say, is what they call “catch and release,” a dehumanizing term borrowed from fishing

.. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, dispatched this argument in a Facebook post on Monday. “The administration’s decision to separate families is a new, discretionary choice. Anyone saying that their hands are tied or that the only conceivable way to fix the problem of catch-and-release is to rip families apart is flat wrong,” he wrote. Some in the administration, he added, “have decided that this cruel policy increases their legislative leverage.”

.. The administration’s justifications and denials are meant to obscure that fact. Consider Nielsen’s suggestion, during a speech on Monday, that the administration is worried about child smuggling

.. Officers separated them — according to a lawsuit, Ms. L could hear her daughter in the next room, screaming — and the girl was sent to Chicago while her mother was held in California.

.. When the A.C.L.U. sued on Ms. L’s behalf, officials claimed they’d taken the girl because Ms. L couldn’t prove she was her parent. The judge in the case ordered a DNA test

.. “The truth is they’ve been doing this all along for deterrence purposes, as sometimes they boldly said in the press,” Lee Gelernt, an A.C.L.U. lawyer who argued the case, told me. “But when confronted in a federal lawsuit, they tried to retroactively justify it by saying they couldn’t figure out whether it was the mother.” It’s hard to know who’s worse — the sociopaths like Miller who glory in the administration’s cruelty, or those who are abashed enough to lie about the filthy thing they’re part of, but not to do anything else.